"Some really bad things happened to Otto — some really really bad things. But he tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word," Trump said, referring to the North Korean dictator.

Warmbier, 22, was arrested for taking a propaganda banner from a hotel while on a visit to Pyongyang in January 2016. The University of Virginia student from Ohio was later sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.